Bono plumbs the mysteries of music
U2 frontman pens song and roars in first acting role for ‘Sing 2’
Bono is at home, literally, talking about his first substantial acting role and the ongoing mystery of what he does for a living.
“Making music has been a source of great frustration for me as well as great joy,” he says over a video call. “I didn’t have musical training as a kid. So I have to depend on my three bandmates and others to get the melodies I hear in my head, or the ideas, across. And therein lies great frustration, that you depend on others — and the great joy, that you depend on others — and they happen to be your best mates.”
When referred to as “an actual musician,” the famed frontman of U2 grins in this cozy room in his Dublin abode and says, “Well, that might be an exaggeration. That’s why I’m involved with this: I’m obsessed with what it takes to become one. But I know musicians.”
In “Sing 2,” Garth Jennings’ sequel to his 2016 music-mad-animals hit, Bono voices Clay Calloway, a storied superstar singersongwriter (portrayed as a great, silver-maned lion) who has long been a recluse since the death of his wife. Much of the film is about the search for Calloway and how the “Sing” gang might persuade him to embrace his gift again. It’s a quest almost as improbable as Jennings’ hopes to even land Bono for the film.
But the two connected right away. “I found myself on a call with (Jennings), walking in the hills there in Los Angeles,” the singer says. “I got lost talking to him, every which way — I didn’t know where I was. He got me talking about singing, the nature of singing, what it was to be a singer, where does singing come from. And of course, being Irish, these are all the right questions!”
For his part, Jennings says he thought the pitch was a long shot. The “Sing 2” team, he says, “knew we needed a rock legend — not only a personality, but the music that would come with them. Bono was the first thought. He would be amazing and those songs would fit so well with that kind of a story. But he’s not going to say ‘Yes.’ I mean, this is a lion.
“But he got it right away. He was almost selling it back to me when we had this long conversation: ‘I get what this character is; he has a big, passionate feeling toward music and what it can do for people.’ That story is really about healing. And U2’s concerts, they can be like a religious experience.”
Bono says, “The lion had lost his roar. We ended up talking about what would cease you from singing. We ended up talking about grief. Grief can open up creativity or close it up. This is a subject I sadly know a little bit about. I’m talking to this dude about a children’s film; are we really going there about grief? But that’s the whole point of these animations, that you use these fun characters to play with deeper, darker themes.”
Jennings says that despite the singer being an acting novice, little guidance was needed.
“He understood what the character was and you had to feel for him, that he was cantankerous and provocative and a bit intimidating, but underneath it all was really, really sad. Steeped in grief. ‘Just be the gruff, old, nasty neighbor.’ And when it came to getting to the root of it all, ‘Don’t be afraid to break a little.’ ”
Jennings did help the singer tap into the lion within. “Garth said … ‘Have you come across any other lions?’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ He said, ‘What’s the striking feature?’ I said, ‘It’s that low rumble. You can’t explain it to people.’ So the growl ... Here’s the thing — when applying that low growl to singing a song like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ the tenor voice, I hit a bit of a problem. So I had to bring a little country there. I had to impersonate a man who’d had a few cigars.”
It’s all part of the passionate pilgrim’s unceasing quest to learn, as he puts it, “What makes people sing, why do I sing, where does it come from?
“I think some people sing for very desperate reasons, and there’s no amount of money you can pay them. That is a kind of vulnerability there. You sing to have fun, you sing to show off, you sing in the bath. But there’s another reason some people sing, and I wanted to write that song.”
And he did. The initial conversation with Jennings sparked a new song, “Your Song Saved My Life.”
Jennings says, “He said, ‘Of course, this would make a great song. Wouldn’t that be great?’ I said, ‘That would be amazing,’ but I thought it was a bit like when people say, ‘You must come for dinner,’ but they never really ask you. But then he turned up for the first (dialogue) recording session, and he says, ‘By the way, I’ve got a song.’
“Now I’m thinking, ‘This is stressful. What if I don’t like it?’ He played it and halfway through, I’m like, ‘It’s the whole end of the movie!’ I’m trying not to cry in front of Bono. He’s like, ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ I’m like, ‘Jesus, it’s great!’ ”
Getting Bono on board the movie was just the first step. The production also had to clear the use of U2 songs. The whole band had to be behind it.
“The question from the band’s point of view was, ‘This is inspired by a kids’ film, right?’ ” the singer recalls. “‘Yeah, this is a great artist, Garth, and we should be honored to be part of this. There’s going to be other U2 songs —’ ‘What?! It’s not just one song?’ ‘No, if we’re in this, we’re in all the way. I’m going to be in the film.’ ‘You’re going to be in the film?’
“I have a lot of explaining in my life to U2; that’s just the nature of democracy,” Bono says.
He later showed them a key scene in which the porcupine Ash, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, sings a heartfelt, stripped-down version of the band’s “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.”
“Scarlett is besotted by music,” Bono says. “She approached that very tenderly. She made that song her own. And you have to be true in that moment or people wouldn’t care. I wasn’t surprised she could pull it off. But the band were,” he says. “I think it stunned them all. I just had to put that scene on: ‘OK? Your songs are in good hands.’ ”
Thus Bono, Evangelist of the Church of Music, won new converts among his lifelong friends.
“It’s a real thing for me as I look at what I do, and I go, ‘Wow, this thing is unknowable.’ You’ll never be a professor of it; you’ll always be a student as you study songs and why they move you or why they don’t. The ones that break all the rules, the ones that invent new ones. I am, as the song I was listening to earlier, ‘Lost in Music,’ more than I’ve ever been.”